Breathe
by mattmetzger
Summary: Spock calms the emotional storm, and finds the beauty in imperfection. Implied S/U. Mostly surrealism within.


**Notes: A quick little oneshot I whipped up in the early hours of this morning. Very weird, very surreal, and...good luck with it.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

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><p>Breathe.<p>

In. Inhale. Stretch the _a _and carry the note. Do not release the _l_.

There is a band around the ribs in breathing; a band of muscle and ache, to stop the cage creaking too far.

Breathe in further; push the band.

This is the wall. In processing, you must allow access to the data being processed. Push through the wall and -

Inh_a_le.

Your lungs expand beyond the ribcage and burst into the air; you become it. You are bleeding out into the atmosphere, until your atoms drift apart into the red sky of the morning above the city. And when the wind moves between the parts of your self, it brushes the heat away and you can begin.

In deconstruction, crushing something into pieces to rebuild, impurities are often crushed out. Simplistic logic, perhaps, but true.

Gather yourself together. Piece by piece; rebuild from the arches of your feet to the individual hairs on the crown of your head, and settle back into your body. The impurities have been released; the air is dirty, but you are not.

Exhale.

An exhalation is a controlled collapse of the lung - collapse yourself inwards. Withdraw; retreat - semantics are unimportant. The _a _and the _l _are the same.

Exh_a_le.

True withdrawal takes time, and you take it - collapsing inwards until you are detached, adrift in the darkness, and separated from the physical world. There is no heartbeat, no temperature, no sound.

Stop breathing.

_Stop_.

Find stillness.

The sea is a stormy one. You wake to the hurricane and sit in the eye, and now its shrieks are incompetent. It cannot reach the world without you; you will not reach the world with it.

This is where the dangers are. This is the past - the stinking mess of blood and decay on the sands and walls of prehistoric dwellings. This is evolution - the snarls and shrieks of a previous species whose legacy lingers on. This is chemistry - the explosions of reactions in the crooks between glands and neural paths. This is physics - the power that this could do unleashed in a body strong enough to wield it.

And this is death - hers, theirs, nearly yours - and revenge - _for the one who took Mother's life_ - and all the minor tweaks and rages that boil together like a volcanic crust - too cold, always too cold, and too many minds raving all the time - and anger - screaming, howling anger, and -

This is love - brown eyes - and passion - such delicate hands - and uncertainty - nights awake without cause - and upsurges in the sea of happiness - her breath on your shoulder in the night.

This is _you_.

And without you. You sit in the eye of the storm, untouched, and - feel. Disconnected thus, you may feel, but there is no response. It cannot escape - it cannot breach the darkness alone to the world, and so you sit, waiting - waiting - _feeling_.

Hurricanes are created by energy, and require that energy source to continue. When hurricanes land, they do so only briefly, and die away before too long, removed from the ocean.

Without the heat of emotional input, the storm begins to fade around you. The sources are not removed - a tattooed face leers out of the ocean at your heels, and someone smiles in the darkness. The emotions fade away until the faces - voices, faces, a too-cool San Francisco breeze across your face - linger alone, and the water stills.

Here.

Here is idealism. Here is the place that you wish to belong. This is the place - caught between a stilled ocean and a frozen sky - that you wish to call home. You wish - you always wish - to remain here, or perhaps for this to be the place at which you can begin.

A ripple washes across the water.

This is what you imagine true logic is like, and that you imagine it at all proves your inability to remain. That you drift, having attained your goal, is the epitome of illogical. That you long to remain - _Human_.

The waters ripple again, and her smile is blurred. She cannot reach you. Here, nothing could.

Here is withdrawal. You do not disturb - _dare I disturb the universe?_ - the water or the sky, and they do not disturb you. You remain unconcerned with life - _life, the universe, and everything_ - and death, and the thoughts carry no weight, metaphorical or otherwise. This is where nothing matters; this is the land of - _hope and glory _- Surak's teachings, the land that logic grants safely, the land where biology and blood do not reign supreme, and the land of your fathers.

It is not the land of your mothers.

It is not a _land_, and the illogic proves itself without impact.

The waters ripple stronger now; they are not stormy, but there is disturbance. You cannot be disturbed.

This would be perfection; adrift eternally in the undisturbed country. She smiles from the water; there is no beauty in her smile. Mere aesthetics.

_Start_.

Inhale.

Extend the _a _and do not release the _l_, and measure.

The lungs inflate; the equalisation of air pressure from one area to the next causes the sensation known as breathing, and is allowed by the movement of the ribs and the diaphragm in ninety-five percent of humanoid species.

There is a band around your ribs, when you breathe; measure your respiration to this point, and restore it from its breaking point. Recreate your barriers, and the pain-tug of exerting your ribcage too far, and -

Exhale.

Do not extend the _a_. Release the _l_.

Reconnect.

True meditation withdraws the mind from the body to allow for a greater depth of concentration, and a lack of interference or disturbance. While breathing exercises can achieve a low level of meditation, entire detachment is necessary to sufficiently process strong emotional responses.

As such, withdrawing from meditation requires a reconnection to the body, facilitated by breathing exercises and muscle exercises to minor groups, such as the eyes, tongue, fingers and toes. This also serves as a signal to any attending party -

She speaks.

Your hearing is intact, but your mind struggles momentarily, with confusion considered typical for those rising from a deep trance, to understand her words. For a moment, the sound lingers nonsensical in the air, before it takes shape as your name, and you look to her.

She kneels, waiting. She has been calling for some time, but she does not look concerned, merely patient. She has been infinitely patient these last weeks, and even as you note that she is out of uniform, her hair is loose and tangled, and she kneels on the deck like a child telling secrets, the thought crosses your awakened mind.

Aesthetics are perhaps not mere in her case.

You offer your hand; she brushes her fingers against yours, and smiles.

She is beautiful.


End file.
